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There was nothing special about that Thursday, so Hank and I decided to celebrate its ordinariness by ordering a giant pizza from the Colosseum, the Blandsville’s best (and only) pizzeria. We ignored the proletarian, the centurion, the gladiator and the senator and went for the emperor, a special that includes carrots, radishes, anchovies and pimentos, ignoring what the initials and ingredients spell. I love anchovies and fortunately Hank does too. My ex-wife hated them so we seldom had pizza, but anchovies was the least of our differences.
We had reduced the pizza to a few tiny crumbs and our coffee to dregs when a client appeared. Hank left with the remnants of our feast.
“Mr. Tuff. I’m Pierre Bongout, owner and manager of the Cochon Heureux.”
“I’ve eaten there a number of times.” The actual number was one and that time someone else paid. It was some special occasion, perhaps his divorce. The quality of the food is high, but so are the prices.
“What do you know about food, Mr. Tuff?”
“Not much. I like to eat it and groceries are expensive.”
“A restaurant operates on a very tight budget. For the past few weeks, food has been disappearing from my restaurant, large quantities of it. I hope you can find the person responsible for this theft and stop them.”
“You don’t fit one of my criteria for clients, Mr. Bongout: you are not a senior citizen.”
“But some of my customers are.”
It was a valid point; besides business has been slow lately – well, more exactly non-existent, so I took the case.
That afternoon I went to the Cochon Heureux. The dining room was called the Sty, the tables were numbered and called Troughs, and the kitchen the Pigs’ Pantry. I was going to work undercover, so I changed into a waiter’s uniform. It did not become me, but no clothing style does. My name-tag, in the shape of a pig, bore the name “Elmer” because we did not want to alert the thief if he or she were on the staff.
There were three waitresses, Emily, Madeline and Lucy, short for Lucrezia, I learned as in Borgia, and two cooks, Gus and Sam. I had tables one to four.
I had expected the special to be pork tenderloin or something liberally garnished with bacon, but it wasn’t.
My first customers were a middle-aged couple. The man looked at the menu and asked: “What’s good?” This frequent question was, I thought, silly. It implies that restaurants deliberately serve meals that aren’t good. It also presumes that the server has tried everything on the menu and that his or her tastes are the same as the diner’s.
“Well, the pigs’ feet and sauerkraut were delicious, but it was so good that it’s all gone.”
The man gave me a puzzled look. Obviously he was insensitive to sarcasm. Eventually he and his wife both ordered meat loaf.
